Although the work is not strictly autobiographical, according to the author, most readers accept "that the young boy, the first-person narrator, is the author himself." Kim wrote a series of seven fictional tales about a Korean boy that are perceived and classified ironically as a non-fictional account of his life. Kim claims autobiography is neither pure non-fiction nor is fiction pure fiction. He leaves it up to the reader to evaluate Lost Names as whatever they would like it to be since, he writes, it was written for them.
Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood